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The 25 Best Movie Critics of All Time

Everyone else's opinions are optional.

Image via Complex Original

As self-ran blogs and online message boards continue to dominate pop culture conversations, one old adage seems more apt than ever: Everyone's a critic.

The days when new movies were reviewed exclusively by knowledgeable film scholars are gone. Anyone who knows how to navigate Wordpress can publish their written views about the latest art-house film, popcorn flick, or costume drama. And, chances are, somebody's going to read it.

The most frustrating thing about this online renaissance—aside from suffering ignorant comments from trolls—is the way it trivializes the grade-A essays and critiques penned by folks whose entire lives have been dedicated to cinema studies.

In our own humble ways, we operate this Pop Culture channel utilizing the fine examples left by the greatest women and men of film criticism, albeit without losing sight of the modern vibes of 21st century Internet methodologies. And by "the greatest," we're referring to The 25 Best Movie Critics of All Time . Anyone who takes cinema seriously is advised to read their work.

RELATED: The 50 Harshest Roger Ebert Movie Review Quotes RELATED: The 100 Best Movies of the Complex Decade RELATED: 20 Pieces of Hollywood Trivia That Will Blow Your Mind!

Written by Matt Barone ( @MBarone )

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25. David Edelstein

Publications: Slate , New York Post , The Village Voice , Boston Phoenix , The New York Times , Rolling Stone , Vanity Fair , Variety , New York Read Reviews Here

As filmgoers, we obviously prefer good movies over bad ones, but when it comes to reviews, it's always more fun to read a tear-down of a truly crappy movie. Few critics are able to eviscerate cinema's dregs quite like New York 's champion of snark, David Edelstein. It's exactly that brand of written scorn that immortalized Edelstein during the heyday of Saw and Hostel , wholly unpleasant horror movies that he famously dubbed "torture porn."

24. Kim Newman

Publications: City Limits , Sight and Sound , Empire Read Reviews Here

Highbrow movie critics have a tendency to downplay horror movies, and unfairly so. Kim Newman, on the other hand, has made a career out of championing the weirdest, most overlooked, and decidedly one-of-a-kind gore flicks, creature features, and every other kind of scare flick.

Hailing from London, Newman also moonlights as a horror fiction writer, but it's his regular Empire column, "Kim Newman's Video Dungeon," that still provides the 28-year veteran's most anticipated writings. Everything from Lucio Fulci pictures to schlock like Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks the Same  (yes, that's a real movie) gets the Dungeon treatment.

Those interested in catching up with Newman's pro-genre narratives should start with his massive, brilliantly comprehensive book Nightmare Movies: Horror on Screen Since the 1960s .

23. Wesley Morris

Publications: The Boston Globe , Grantland Read Reviews Here

Wesley Morris' resume speaks for itself. First, there's the college he attended: Yale University. Second, and most importantly, there's that measly honor he was bestowed with last year: the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.

Just imagine the sobs and head-smacks happening inside The Boston Globe 's office when Morris announced that he was leaving the newspaper to join Bill Simmons' Grantland full-time and become its biggest on-staff movie head.

22. Mike D'Angelo

Publications: Las Vegas Weekly , The Village Voice , Variety , Time Out New York , Nerve (website), Esquire Read Reviews Here

Mike D'Angelo caught onto the power of online film criticism way before anyone else. Back in 1995, he started the blog The Man Who Viewed Too Muc h , a popular cyber hub for D'Angelo's accessible yet brainy reviews. Through the success of that site, he scored a full-time gig with Time Out New York and handled a monthly column in Esquire .

These days, he's back on the World Wide Web via AV Club's recurring "Scenic Routes," where D'Angelo breaks down one key scene from a noteworthy film in extensive detail.

21. Todd McCarthy

Publications: Variety , The Hollywood Reporter Read Reviews Here

Movie junkies who impatiently wait for the first reviews of prestige pictures and pricey blockbusters should know Todd McCarthy's name well. Beginning in the late 1970s, McCarthy spent more than 30 years writing reviews for Variety , meaning his takes were, more often than not, the earliest published reactions to big studios' latest releases. And in that, he became a major authority whose dry, clinical observations helped to either build buzz or deliver a film DOA.

20. Glenn Kenny

Publications: The Village Voice , Premiere , The Auteurs (website), MSN (website) Read Reviews Here

Reading Glenn Kenny's reviews and essays is like being in a film class, but without the dry chafing of academia. As astute as he is witty, the former Premiere  critic has a strong knack for connecting current movies to old classics.

On his highly recommended blog, Some Came Running , Kenny regularly posts long, knowledgeable analyses of vintage films that draw insightful connections to today's pictures. In early January, for example, Kenny used the racial debate surrounding Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained to reflect upon D.W. Griffith's 1915 controversy magnet The Birth of a Nation .

19. Dana Stevens

Publication: Slate Read Reviews Here

To best appreciate Slate 's Dana Stevens, and in an effort to show her unpredictability and dedication to her own convictions, let's cite a few of her more recent reviews. As most of her peers were praising Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained , Stevens reacted from a place of inner disgust : "Tarantino’s intent may have been to showcase the horrors of slavery, but there’s something about his directorial delectation in all these acts of racial violence that left me not just physically but morally queasy."

But, at the same time, she's able to embrace the splattery weirdness of genre maverick Don Coscarelli's absurdist delight John Dies at the End , writing, "The story’s rabbit holes got so deep that I can’t actually tell you whether the movie’s title is a spoiler or not, but I loved John Dies at the End for so confidently whisking the viewer to a place where the question 'Well, did he die or didn’t he?' seems hopelessly un-nuanced and square."

18. Vincent Canby

Publications: Variety , The New York Times Read Reviews Here

During his 24-year run as the chief film critic for The New York Times , Vincent Canby's (1924-2000) words wielded the power of mighty swords. If he chastised a foreign or independent movie, which he so often did, said film didn't stand a chance of catching on in the Big Apple. Take British director Terence Davies, for example, who made two pictures that Canby ridiculed in print and inadvertently prevented from receiving healthy American distribution.

His reviews didn't read like scholarly texts; rather, Canby's writing favored whip-smart humor. When covering a young, seriously bulked-up Arnold Schwarzenegger, he described the Austrian bodybuilder as ""something the actor might want to shed in order to slip into something more comfortable."

17. Philip French

Publications: The Times , The Observer , Sight and Sound Read Reviews Here

Over in England, Philip French is a loud voice among film critics. In fact, he's arguably the UK's greatest living movie analyst. And if French has an area of untouchable expertise, it's in the cowboys-and-spurs sect of cinema: Originally published back in 1977, French's definitive book Westerns: Aspects of a Movie Genre is regarded as the greatest book ever written on the subject. And, best of all, you don't need to know Sergio Leone's birthday off the top of your head to appreciate the genre, thanks to French's lively writing.

16. Dilys Powell

Publications: The Sunday Times , Punch

Check those publication names above—far cries from the worldwide notoriety of periodicals like The New York Times , right? That's why the late Elizabeth Dilys Powell (who dropped her first name when writing) isn't frequently referenced when people discuss their favorite movie critics.

She worked in a vacuum of sorts, and her self-aware, pithy style of writing wasn't universally acknowledged until after her death in 1995. The source of her posthumous respect: cinephiles acquainting themselves with her sprawling, though now hard to find, book The Golden Screen: Fifty Years of Films .

15. Lisa Schwarzbaum

Publications: The Boston Globe , Entertainment Weekly Read Reviews Here

Earlier this week, the face of Entertainment Weekly began an unexpected face-change when Lisa Schwarzbaum, one of the magazine's two in-house movie critics (the other being Owen Gleiberman), announced that she's leaving the post after 22 acclaimed, productive years. It's a real blow to the glossy, easily consumed mag, since Schwarzbaum's loose, conversational reviews are, on a weekly basis, one of EW 's strongest components.

14. Manny Farber

Publications: The New Republic , Time , The Nation , New Leader , Cavalier , Artforum Read Reviews Here

Manny Farber (1917-2008) had a low tolerance for high art. Which isn't to say that the Arizona native had bad taste—on the contrary, Farber possessed a brave, against-the-grain fondness for otherwise frowned-upon fringe cinema. Most of his peers couldn't be bothered by the genre trappings of anti-prestige artists like Laurel and Hardy, Don Siegel, and Andy Warhol, but Farber, bless his soul, devoted most of his career to casting their kinds of creative minds in a celebratory, you-need-to-watch-this light.

See his landmark essay "White Elephant Art vs. Termite Art" for a look into this singular mind.

13. Janet Maslin

Publication: The New York Times Read Reviews Here

Those who currently read The New York Times solely to check out film critic Manohla Dargis' latest reviews should salute Janet Maslin, big time. From 1977 through 1999, the NYC-bred Maslin brought her sterling combination of smarts and wiles to the reputable newspaper, specifically riding hard for the independent movie scene.

12. A.O. Scott

Publications: Newsday , Slate , The New York Times Read Reviews Here

One look at Anthony Oliver (or, simply, A.O.) Scott's family background should quickly explain why he's such a poignant writer: Both his parents were college professors. Keeping the Scott brood's educated leanings alive and well, Mr. New York Times Movie Reviewer (working alongside Manohla Dargis) represents a younger breed of critical prestige. He's only 46-years-old, yet Scott's work can be placed next to the also currently active Roger Ebert's output. Don't be surprised if he's held in the same kind of reverential esteem as Mr. Ebert by the time he reaches 70.

11. James Agee

Publications: Time , The Nation Read Reviews Here

A true trailblazer, James Agee gave film criticism a boost of widespread credibility back in the 1940s, when he reviewed countless movies for both Time and The Nation . And he never hid his affinity for silent films, often saving his most positive thoughts for wordless cinema. As for every other kind, Agee is largely remembered as being a tough man to please. He wasn't the type to hand out middling criticisms—his standards were sky-high.

Clearly, he knew what he was talking about: After ending his critic hustle in the early 1950s, Agee went on to work on the screenplays for the greatly revered films The African Queen (1951) and The Night of the Hunter (1955). Plus, following his death in 1945, Agee posthumously won a Pulitzer Prize for his novel A Death in the Family .

10. Anthony Lane

Publications: The Independent , Independent on Sunday , The New Yorker Read Reviews Here

In a different reality, Anthony Lane could be a prolific comedy writer. Through his intelligent reviews, The New Yorker 's free-wheeling critic (he's been on staff there since 1993) always conveys a sharp sense of humor, addressing a film's faults and positive attributes with self-deprecation and jokes.

In his 2003 book, Nobody's Perfect: Writings from The New Yorker , Lane provided a short list of must-do practices for anyone who's interested in following a similar career path, and it's quite indicative of the man's wit. Case in point, this tip: "Try to keep up with documentaries about Swabian transsexuals (or, see everything regardless of budget or hype)."

9. François Truffaut

Publication: Cahiers du cinéma Read Reviews Here

François Truffaut is remembered best for being a master filmmaker, and with good reason. With undisputed classics like The 400 Blows (1959) and the meta Day for Night (1973) under his belt, the icon of French filmmaking (1932-1984) stands as one of cinema's exemplary directors.

But all of the talk about his behind-the-camera work detracts from his impressive run as a movie critic, during which he earned a stigma as France's harshest voice, writing for Cahiers du cinema, the film magazine from which the Nouvelle Vague  movement sprang from. His polarizing negativity reached its apex with the article "A Certain Trend in French Cinema" (1954), a call-to-arms for those who weren't happy with the country's moviegoing trends.

8. Manohla Dargis

Publications: Los Angeles Times , LA Weekly , The Village Voice , Film Comment , Sight and Sound , The New York Times Read Reviews Here

You have to respect Manohla Dargis' anonymous gangster. Whereas every other movie critic on this countdown will gladly take pictures and go on camera to voice their opinions, the 50-something Dargis has enjoyed a respected, fruitful career without needing to put a widely-seen face to her byline.

Week in and week out, her learned, gorgeously written work enhances The New York Times Arts section, giving equal attention and excitement to films as diverse as Silver Linings Playbook and divisive as French writer-director Gaspar Noe's dizzying Enter the Void . Unlike most high-end critics, Dargis' name above a review of a genre film doesn't guarantee a wrongly slanted, probably disinterested point-of-view. For her, weirdo cinema has just as much potential as Oscar fare.

7. David Denby

Publications: The Atlantic , New York , The New Yorker Read Reviews Here

Consider David Denby the film critics' circuit's answer to the hip-hop community's Nas. Similar to how Nasir Jones made it his mission to question the existence of his once-prevalent and always cherished art form, The New Yorker 's chief film writer shook up the world of big-screen lovers with his controversial book Do the Movies Have a Future? . Largely avoiding snark, Denby's writing throughout the page-turner is earnest, focusing on the promotion of film's older ideals against the blockbusters and money-first products that major studios rush into theaters nowadays.

If written by a lesser critic, Do the Movies Have a Future?  would've came off as a real bitch-fest, one akin to an aged D.I.T.C. fan crying about Chief Keef and Trinidad James for 368 pages. But thanks to Denby's sterling, deserved reputation, it's an important conversation-starter from a master who's at the top of his game.

6. Jonathan Rosenbaum

Publications: Cahiers du cinéma , Film Comment , Chicago Reader Read Reviews Here

Jonathan Rosenbuam is a true crusader. Born in Alabama, the wide-eyed, then-26-years-old go-getter moved to Paris in 1969, where he routinely contributed film reviews to publications like Sight & Sound and The Village Voice . That time spent overseas filled Rosenbaum with an intense appreciation for non-American movies, and he's since made it his personal mission to promote international filmmaking here in the states.

For his most impassioned defense of non-Hollywood productions, the indispensable 2002 book Movie Wars: How Hollywood and the Media Limit What Movies We Can See is a must.

5. J. Hoberman

Publications: The Village Voice , Film Comment , The New York Times , The Virginia Quarterly Review , ArtInfo (website) Read Reviews Here

Simply put, there's no greater living film essayist than James Lewis Hoberman, better known as J. Hoberman. Starting at The Village Voice  in the '70s, the New York City native owned the paper's film reviews section with his beautifully composed, scholarly critiques until he was wrongly removed from his post in 2012.

The thing about Hoberman's reviews, though, is that they don't read like reviews; they're more like heavily researched narratives that relate the movie in question to larger, all-encompassing themes that touch upon society, cinema, and politics.

For incredibly informative and vibrantly penned time capsules, pick up any one of Hoberman's many books. Our recommendations: the cult community manifesto Midnight Movies (co-written with Jonathan Rosenbaum) and his most recent release, Film After Film , a compilation of Hoberman's post-9/11 writings that makes for a dynamic companion to Denby's Do the Movies Have a Future?

4. Pauline Kael

Publications: City Lights , McCall's , The New Republic , The New Yorker Read Reviews Here

It takes a lot of nerve to go against the popular consensus, no matter the contrarian's gender, but a female movie critic who doesn't fear pissing off her (male) contemporaries nor Hollywood's (male) elite? That's one tough person.

Widely regarded as one of the most influential film analysts ever, the late Pauline Kael filled her  New Yorker  reviews (published from 1968 through 1991) with fearless wit, often writing in the first-person to either attack or praise a motion picture. She thrived during times when jealous ones especially envied, weathering sexist insults and accusations of star-chasing favoritism.

Best of all, Kael championed genre filmmakers like Brian De Palma, Walter Hill, and Sam Peckinpah, artists who are revered now but initially released low-budget, unfairly B-pegged flicks. She was a rebel with a passionate cause.

3. Andrew Sarris

Publications: Film Culture , The Village Voice , NY Film Bulletin , The New York Observer Read Reviews Here

Every cinematic shotcaller working today, whether independent or major, owes a tremendous debt of gratitude to Andrew Sarris. Strong-minded and blessed with the gift of fluid prose, the late Brooklyn-born writer is best remembered for his classic 1968 tome The American Cinema: Directors and Directions 1929-1968 , an exhaustive, opinionated dissection of pre-'68 sound films broken down by the individual filmmakers.

In The American Cinema , Sarris fully developed the influential auteur theory, bringing the daring pro-director beliefs practiced by the many great critics working for France's Cahiers du Cinéma and popularizing them in the United States.

2. Roger Ebert

Publication: Chicago Sun Times Read reviews here

Like Jay-Z is for rappers, Roger Ebert is the most widely recognized movie critic ever. He's been cranking out entertaining, witty, and often heartfelt reviews for the Chicago Sun Times since 1967, forging a 40-plus-year career that's seen him conquer print media, the online blogosphere, and even television. Of course you remember watching him on his groundbreaking At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert , which he co-hosted with his best confidante, the late Chicago Tribune  critic. Together, they made upward and downward thumbs iconic.

Ebert's congratulatory reviews are top-notch, yet it's his negative, gloves-off beatdowns of crappy cinema that have always been his most delightful to read. Read his 50 harshest review quotes for yourselves .

1. André Bazin

Publication: Cahiers du Cinéma Read Reviews Here

There's arguably no book about movies that's as mandatory as André Bazin's What is Cinema?  Still taught in film classes today, it's the definitive explanation of what makes the medium's proverbial heart beat, offering groundbreaking views on visual storytelling, with a special fondness for patience and duration. Bazin was a strong advocate of the long take, after all.

He's also responsible for co-founding the game-changing magazine Cahiers du Cinéma  in 1951, through which Bazin and his colleagues introduced the auteur theory that has since helped to contextualize the classic films made by the likes of Fritz Lang, Howard Hawks, and Alfred Hitchcock.

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Film critics are tasked with honesty, — and they are often seen as responsible for informing moviegoers of whether they should part with their hard-earned money or not. This has been the case from the prime of TV's Siskel & Ebert to the rise of Rotten Tomatoes.

Through the decades, there have been many movie critics who have made a particularly significant impact in the world of film, and each of these are worthy of mention. Each of these critics have left a lasting impression on moviegoers across the world, and an influence on film itself.

12 Joe Morgenstern

Writing as a film critic for almost twenty years at Newsweek, Joe Morgenstern made a name for himself as an authority in film. He went on to write for The Wall Street Journal for almost another thirty years. Morgenstern won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 2005 for his work in film and television criticism.

RELATED: 10 Underrated Movies Recommended by Gene Siskel One of his claims to fame during his tenure at Newsweek is that he wrote a negative opinion of the film Bonnie and Clyde , but after careful consideration, published a retraction in a subsequent issue of the magazine. Which served to work as a great marketing opportunity for the film, noting that it caused a renowned film critic to change his opinion on the quality of the film.

11 Mark Kermode

An widely published critic, musician, radio and podcast host, Mark Kermode is a name many film buffs are familiar with. Kermode began his film critic writing career in Manchester's City Life magazine, then moving on to Time Out and NME in London. He has also written for The Independent , Vox , Empire , Flicks among others.

RELATED: 12 of Gene Siskel's Favorite Movies Ever In addition to his truly prolific career in writing, Kermode is also a double bass player and has played in various rockabilly bands. Kermode became chief film critic for The Observer in 2013. In 2014, he named The Babadook the best film of the year. His favorite film is The Exorcist .

10 Andrew Sarris

Andrew Sarris was a lover of film. Writing for the magazine, Film Culture , and then eventually moving to write for The Village Voice . Some regarded his writing as elitist, but was undeniably one of the most impactful and respected in his field. Eventually, he wrote for The New York Observer and then taught as a professor of film at Columbia University until he retired in 2011, a year before his death.

Sarris was married to fellow film critic Molly Haskell . Sarris claimed that for thirty years, if anyone were to ask what his favorite film was, his answer was unvaried: The Earrings of Madame de... , by Max Ophuls . Sarris consistently referred to this film as the most perfect film ever made.

9 James Agee

James Agee was an accomplished novelist, journalist, as well as a poet, screenwriter, and film critic. In the 1940s, he became one of the most widely known film critics as he wrote for Time Magazine . He wrote for Fortune , The Nation , and Life Magazine , as well.

RELATED: Behind the Scenes: 10 Great Films About Filmmaking That Aren't ENTOURAGE In 1958, he was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his autobiographical novel, A Death in the Family . Additionally, he is well-known as the screenwriter for such revered film classics as The African Queen and The Night of the Hunter .

8 André Bazin

In his unseasonably short life, André Bazin was nevertheless a prolific critic and theorist of film. As the co-founder of the film magazine Cahiers du cinema , he regularly would provide criticism and feedback on films of that era.

Bazin's passion for realism often conflicted with other film theorists of his time. The influential voice was silenced to soon, when Bazin died of leukemia at age 40 in 1958.

7 Molly Haskell

Author and feminist film critic, Molly Haskell has been active in the field since the 1960s. Writing for publications such as The New York Times , The Guardian, Esquire, and many others, she has established a legacy as one of the most influential of all critics. Her most famous book is the searing, incisive From Reverance to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies .

On top of reviewing film and stage for decades, she is also an accomplished author with over a half dozen books written on the topic of film and film criticism. In 2019, she was the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Fellow of the Year.

6 François Truffaut

Not only was François Truffaut an esteemed and influential film critic, but he also was, of course, a director, screenwriter, producer and actor. He is regarded as one of the founders of the French New Wave, and remains to this day one of the greatest icons in the French film industry.

RELATED: 'The 400 Blows' and 9 More of the Best French New Wave Movies, According to IMDb His career in film speaks for itself. He served as a director to over twenty films, an actor in over fifteen films, and a producer to at least five. He has over a dozen written books credited to his name ( Hitchcock/Truffaut is an essential read for all fans of film).

5 Vincent Canby

Vincent Canby was an accomplished writer who served as the premier film critic for The New York Times from the late 1960s until the early 1990s, moving only then to be their main theater critic from 1994 until 2000, when he passed away. Before the Times , he wrote briefly for the Chicago Journal of Commerce , then another brief stint at Variety .

Canby was known to be a supporter of filmmakers with a specific style, such as Stanley Kubrick , Spike Lee , and Woody Allen . Additionally, he was known to have a highly negative view of films that were generally well received, such as Blazing Saddles , Rocky , Rain Man , among others. Whether you agree with his opinions or not, Canby was truly a master with words, and will forever remembered in the world of film and theater.

4 Leonard Maltin

Film critic, published author and editor, podcast guest and host, noted television host... and Guinness World Record Holder?! Yes, Leonard Maltin holds the world record for the shortest movie review, which consists of his review of the 1948 film Isn’t It Romantic in which he merely stated: “No”.

RELATED: 9 Movies Roger Ebert Hated, But Audiences Loved

Voicing himself in South Park and The Simpsons (he also played himself in Gremlins 2 ) and writing or editing over 20 books, Maltin is not only accomplished, but he is beloved by all, being honored by the National Board of Review, the Telluride Film Festival, the Los Angeles City Council, and many others.

3 Gene Siskel

Most famous for being half of the duo of Siskel & Ebert , Gene Siskel has a very long history of providing the world with his opinion on film. He began his career writing for the Chicago Tribune in 1969. From there, he hosted a review program with Roger Ebert until his death in 1999.

In 1998, Siskel was diagnosed with a brain tumor and underwent immediate surgery to remedy the issue. Despite briefly returning to the show, in February 1999, he decided to take a leave of absence to allow himself to recover, only to pass away from complications 3 days later. His legacy will forever and always get two thumbs way up from friends and fans alike.

2 Pauline Kael

A critic from an earlier era than some of these others, Pauline Kael was one of the most influential film critics of her era. She was known as witty, biting, and being overtly opinionated, but still focused on getting her voice heard. She was known for regularly disagreeing with her contemporaries.

RELATED: Quentin Tarantino’s ‘The Movie Critic’ Is Set in 1977, But It’s Not About Pauline Kael

Writing for The New Yorker for over twenty years, Kael created a lasting impression with critics of several generations. Despite a diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease in the 1980s, she continued to write for New Yorker until 1991, when she announced her retirement.

1 Roger Ebert

When it comes to movie critics, the one name that is recognizable above all else is the truly unforgettable and inspirational Roger Ebert . His career lasted nearly a half-century, and his impact has lasted long after his death in 2013. He paved the way for virtually every critic who's followed.

Whether he was writing for the Chicago Sun-Times or hosting his widely beloved television series sharing his thoughts on film, Ebert was a worldwide treasure. He was the first film critic to ever win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism, in 1975. While he may be gone, he will never be forgotten and will always be loved for what he brought to the world of film criticism.

NEXT: 15 Great Underrated Movies Recommended by Roger Ebert

• Roger Ebert

Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, chaz's journal, great movies, contributors, the ten best films of 2021.

What a year. Once again, the conversation around cinema in 2021 seemed as dominated by  how we watch movies as much as the quality of the films themselves. And yet as people argued about theater safety and streaming services, the actual filmmaking felt like it returned to form. Some of the best living filmmakers released new masterpieces while new voices joined them, giving us all hope for the next generation. Whether it's on a small or big screen, it's about the films themselves, movies that move us, transport us, and challenge us. And there were a LOT of those this year. Taking in all of the top ten lists of our film critics produced a master list of over 80 titles, whittled down to the list below based on a point system. There are  great films just outside this top twenty, which truly proves how much there was to watch in 2021 (and, given how some of these films haven't been widely released yet, early 2022). We will publish our individual lists tomorrow from both our critics and our extended list of contributors, but these are the best films of 2021 as chosen by the regular critical staff of  RogerEbert.com .

Runners-up: " Annette ," " The Card Counter ," " The Disciple ," " Flee ," "A Hero," "The Lost Daughter," " Passing ," " Procession ," " Titane ," and " The Velvet Underground "

10. "Parallel Mothers"

“Parallel Mothers” marks the seventh collaboration between Penélope Cruz and Pedro Almodóvar . After guiding Antonio Banderas , another frequent collaborator, to his best performance in “ Pain and Glory ,” the director offers Cruz her own candidate for career-best work. In the process, he entrusts her with a subplot that finally explores a topic mostly absent from the director’s canon: the Spanish Civil War. The film begins when Cruz’s photographer, Janis, asks her most recent subject, a forensic anthropologist named Arturo (Israel Elejalde), to assist her in a wartime mass grave’s excavation in her hometown. Her murdered great-grandfather may be buried there, and she’d like to have him moved to a family plot. It’s heavy subject matter, but just when you think Almodóvar is steering away from his melodramatic excesses, as he did with “ Julieta ,” editor Teresa Font cuts to Janis and Arturo lustily going at it in bed.

That development brings us to the mother in the title, though the pregnant Janis’ relationship to the other Mom-to-be, Ana (Milena Smit) is perpendicular, not parallel. The mature Almodóvar of his last few features reverts to his younger self; he becomes that filmmaker whose love of all things maternal or female was expressed in gestures as rich, ripe and bright as his visuals. Cruz, and her even more impressive co-star, Smit expertly wrestle with the grandest, most excessive twists in the screenplay. Meanwhile, Alberto Iglesias ’ scary, moody score and cinematographer José Luis Alcaine ’s colors and camerawork add the pungent spices that make melodrama so delicious. It’s only when the film returns to Janis’ hometown that we realize the Sirkian rope-a-dope Almodóvar’s been working on us. Our emotions have been properly tenderized and our guards are down. Suitably primed, we’re hit with the most charged and angry last image in the director’s career. Once again, Almodóvar proves himself a master of effortlessly shifting tone while telling complex stories that fold in on themselves as they gleefully toy with and enthrall the viewer. ( Odie Henderson)

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9. "Petite Maman"

Quickly shot in secret under pandemic conditions and clocking in at only 72 minutes, Celine Sciamma ’s follow-up to her international hit “ Portrait of a Lady on Fire ” may appear at first glance to be little more than a minor trifle, but even her most devoted supporters may be startled by just how deep and meaningful it really is. Like her other films, it is a sort of a coming-of-age story revolving around female friendships—this time involving two young girls (newcomers Josephine Sanz and Gabrielle Sanz, both wonderful) and a fantastical element that shall go unmentioned here in the hopes of preserving the surprise for those catching up with it—but as good as those earlier efforts have been, this one is even better. This is an extraordinarily touching work that serves as a simple story about a couple of kids and as a quietly profound and humane meditation on friendship, family, and the grieving process that never once makes a false step. I first saw this film nearly a year ago when it made its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival and I doubt that a day has passed since when I haven’t thought about it to some degree. If there was still any debate out there about whether Sciamma deserves to be considered one of the top-tier filmmakers working today, this low-key masterpiece should make the case for her once and for all. ( Peter Sobczynski ) 

8. "The Souvenir, Part II"

Decidedly richer in its creative sights and meta ruminations than its already formidable predecessor, Joanna Hogg ’s one-of-a-kind sequel is a period piece made of elaborate memory pieces that fold into each other. Like before, the director points the camera at herself, not directly but filtered through a fictional alter ego, 1980s British film school student Julie ( Honor Swinton Byrne ).

At once a filmmaker establishing her professional identity and a young woman claiming her emotional agency following a corrosive romance, Julie processes grief and unanswered questions via her burgeoning cinema. If part one felt overwhelming in the complicated and debilitating force she tried to contain, part two soars with a sense of inner growth born of the ashes of such survived sorrow.

Her arc tracks the production of her graduation project, a goodbye to her former lover, as she struggles to distance her personal experiences from the story in her fiction. Presented as a striking set piece, Hogg takes inspired visual swings of lyrical magical realism in making Julie’s short film. She offers no neatly resolved conclusions, but walks Julie across a valley of paralyzing self-doubt, implying she can now withstand whatever is to come. With notes of the character’s hard-earned outlook, Swinton Byrne also evolves her performance, giving Julie a fully lived-in quality.

This sublimely self-aware reflection concedes that our visceral impulses and traumatic recollections often stand inextricable from the artistic process. In the replication of scenarios and sentiments that either approximate her past or improve on the choices she made then not knowing what she knows now, the artist reclaims her narrative. As the “The Souvenir, Part II” takes its final breath, a voice of truth breaks the spell of fabrication for the most satisfying ending of the year. ( Carlos Aguilar )

7. "The Worst Person in the World"

She’s not, of course. But such self-deprecation as the title of this great film comes organically to Julie (Renate Reinsve), the protagonist of Joachim Trier ’s vibrant romantic comedy, which follows her through four years of existential turbulence in contemporary Oslo. It’s a tumultuous period in Julie’s life, as she enters her thirties unclear what they’ll mean; Reinsve holds us close enough that we can see for ourselves the honesty of her oscillating impulses. It’s a sublime, star-making performance, attuned to the epic inner conflict of someone dreading a stage in their life that could prove momentous ... or be like all the other stages. 

Free-wheeling through the richly novelistic detours and details conceived by Trier and co-writer Eskil Vogt , Julie meets one man she’ll fall for ( Anders Danielsen Lie , who tears your heart out) then another she’ll leave him for ( Herbert Nordrum , whose gentleness is a balm). Divided across a prologue, 12 chapters, and an epilogue, Trier’s character study marks an exhilarating turn toward the light for the director. His passionate, formally playful approach is as fluid and spontaneous as Julie herself; one senses Trier is not merely attuned to this story’s romantic optimism but infatuated with the cinematic potential of a genre in which emotions are all that keeps the world turning.

Surrounded by natural wonders and adorned with architectural gems, his Oslo is a city of hidden possibilities and constant poetry. Trier gives us its magic in full during a sequence when time stops for everyone but Julie, inviting her to escape her daily grind and race ecstatically through frozen streets toward whatever’s next. Like the movie, this moment crackles with the promise of open air; it’s an instantly classic portrait of the millennial’s search for self-acceptance in the absence of solid ground. ( Isaac Feldberg )

6. "This Is Not a Burial, It's a Resurrection"

I teach a course in Language of Film at New York University, and the Fall 2020 and the Spring 2021 classes were held remotely. This made for some arguably inhumane conditions for students who were dialing in from Asia or South Asia at 9:30 a.m. Eastern time (do the math). But having students participating from their home environments was refreshing, because (and this is only something I intuited, I can’t actually prove anything) they felt freer to be frank and fully themselves during and after classes. Anyway. One of my students in the Spring was calling in from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Extremely well-versed in a lot of the material I was showing, he was also vocal in his dissatisfactions about the corporate soullessness of contemporary cinema (not to mention the stodginess inherent in a lot of the so-called canon). His cinematic model is the bold Brazilian filmmaker Glauber Rocha.

One day after class, he was bemoaning the lack of true radical cinema, so I suggested a film to him. It was one that I had seen at the Venice Biennale, and indeed I weighed in on it from there, both as a correspondent for RogerEbert.com and a panelist assessing the movies commissioned and funded by the Biennale College. When asked to describe the College, I tell people it’s kind of like a combination of Sundance Labs and “Project Greenlight,” only without the reality TV component. And a genuine commitment to internationalism and diversity. One ought not take a film’s production circumstances under consideration as a critic, I often think. But the fact that its director Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese made this rich, dense, sometimes exhilarating, sometimes confounding film in well less than a year, on a budget of 150,000 Euros, speaks not only to his technical facility but to his passion, vision and commitment. It’s a story about a mother, and about the land to which she is connected—indeed, the narrative is not too far from that of Elia Kazan ’s beautiful, under-appreciated “Wild River”—but it’s also about colonialism, injustice, life, and death. One of my observations, writing from Venice, was: “The specificity with which it pursues its most dazzling, hallucinatory conceits is kind of startling. Along with the images, the score by Yo Miyashita and its accompanying sound design constitute a challenge to conventional Western film language. It’s a welcome and necessary one, I think.”

So this was the movie I recommended to my student: “ This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection .” As it happens, my student had already seen it. But as I was pronouncing its title, he practically leapt out of the chair he was sitting in, in Rio. “That’s it! That’s the film! That’s the only film doing anything new or real!” 

So there’s your recommendation. ( Glenn Kenny )  

5. " The Green Knight "

At once dreamily beautifully and darkly nightmarish, “The Green Knight” is one of the most confident films of the year, but it’s also tantalizingly open to interpretation. Writer/director/editor David Lowery offers a bold vision in his version of the ancient poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight . But while his film takes place in the 14 th  century, the themes he explores couldn’t feel more contemporary.

Be careful what you wish for, Lowery seems to be saying, in baldly striving for accolades and fame. You may tell yourself your ambitions are honorable, but the dangers that await you along your path have others plans—and they may reveal your true nature. Dev Patel ’s Sir Gawain seems like an earnest young man with dreams of elevating himself above his station at the film’s start. When his uncle, King Arthur ( Sean Harris ), asks Gawain to sit with him at a feast, he thinks he’s well on his way. But then the fearsome Green Knight—half man, half tree, all imposing—arrives and offers the challenging “Christmas Game,” providing a high-profile opportunity for Gawain to prove his heroism.

The journey that follows for this would-be knight is stunningly gorgeous again and again. In the fog, in the snow, in a misty forest, Lowery and cinematographer Andrew Droz Palermo create images that are so enveloping and richly textured, you’d want to hang them on your wall—if they weren’t so eerie and foreboding. And Daniel Hart ’s unsettling score perfectly complements these scenes; with its discordant melodies, it puts you on edge from the very beginning. Lowery’s script is episodic in structure, but the tension steadily builds from scene to scene as Gawain inches closer to his destination, and his destiny.

The supporting cast including Alicia Vikander , Sarita Choudhury , Barry Keoghan , and Joel Edgerton all leave indelible impressions and contribute greatly to the film’s growing sense of danger, but Patel is our guide through this dark and mysterious world, and he’s never been better. He’s brooding and physical, cocky yet unsure, sexy as hell, and up for everything this wild, weird film throws his way. ( Christy Lemire )

4. "Summer of Soul"

With more than 50 hours of fragile videotape of a 1969 series of concerts in Harlem to restore and pare down, director Questlove (Ahmir Thompson) said he “just kept it on 24-hour loop, no matter where I was, in the house or in the world. And if anything gave me goosebumps, then I took a note of it. And I felt like if there were at least 30 things that gave me goosebumps, we could have a foundation.” Bringing his skills as a musician, a performer, and a DJ of carefully curated music to “Summer of Soul (…Or When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised),” he assembled the goosebump-inducing clips into more than just a collection of dazzling performances, incorporating them with archival footage and contemporary interviews into a thoughtful exploration of the way we tell our stories. 

Every performance is pure joy, from the Edwin Hawkins Singers to Mahalia Jackson to Hugh Masekela and Nina Simone , blues legend B.B. King, supper club chanteuse Abbey Lincoln , R&B luminaries Gladys Knight and the Pips, and David Ruffin of The Temptations. Stevie Wonder , then just 19 years old, bangs on the drums. The Fifth Dimension sings “Don’t Cha Hear Me Calling To You.” Everyone knows about one big, generation-defining concert in 1969. Now we know there was another one, and more important, we know how many stories have been left out and we know how lucky we are to have Questlove to give us one of them. ( Nell Minow )

3. " Licorice Pizza "

Paul Thomas Anderson's 2018 " Phantom Thread " was a tightly-coiled romantic melodrama (albeit with a maniacal streak), a period piece taking place in 1950s London. "Licorice Pizza" exists in such a different world than "Phantom Thread," such a different dream-space altogether, it's hard to square that the two films came out of the head of one man. (This is true for Anderson's career, in general. He has his "tics," but he doesn't repeat himself.) "Licorice Pizza" is a thin story, really. There's not much to it. Gary, a 15-year-old boy ( Cooper Hoffman ), on the verge of aging out of his profession as a child actor, crushes hard on Alana, a 20-something woman ( Alana Haim ), who brushes off his clumsy advances, and yet finds herself sucked into a series of cockamamie business ventures with him, where hijinx ensue, some of which involve real-life people and situations of actual peril. The structure is episodic, but the episodes rollick around loosely. Nothing is neat or organized. What is evoked is not just the specific era (California in 1973), but a feeling, a vibe. It's the vibe of being young and being stuck, an intolerable state of affairs. It's like that Colin Hay song: "I'm waiting for my real life to begin."

Something's coming. Something big. Gary and Alana know it, they feel it, but whatever it is, it's taking way too long to arrive. Can't something be done to hurry things up a bit? No wonder they spend so much time in the film running: running side by side, running separately, running towards each other. The destination changes, but the need for speed is a constant.

We need to talk about Alana Haim. While she is a successful singer-songwriter (with Haim, a band she formed with her two sisters) this is her first acting role. Often with first-timers, it's necessary to grade on a curve, to take into account nerves and inexperience. Not so here. Haim has arrived fully-formed and fully self-expressed. She strolls onscreen with such authenticity and authority she creates her own reality-distortion field, like all great stars do. She disturbs molecules, just by standing there.

"Licorice Pizza" starts off as the story of a teenage boy's crush on a desirable older woman. We see Alana through Gary's gaga eyes. But then something happens. Alana Haim happens. And nothing can be the same after that. ( Sheila O'Malley )

2. " Drive My Car "

A story of grief and healing, "Drive My Car" is one of those “nothing happens” movies in which everything happens. The action is largely internal, expressed through dialogue and silence and by watching the characters do what they do. You might go into it wondering how on earth a story this earthbound could justify an epic three-hour running time, but once writer/director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi finds his groove (almost immediately) you experience that wonderful bit of cinematic sorcery wherein time seems to have no concrete measurability, and you’re just in an artist’s mindspace, floating and observing and feeling.

Adapted and embellished from a 2014 short story by  Haruki Murakami , Drive My Car focuses on Kafuku ( Hidetoshi Nishijima ), a middle-aged Tokyo theater actor who is coming to terms with tragedy and betrayal. His screenwriter wife Oto had affairs with various men to numb the pain of a terrible mutual loss, and her death leaves him shattered. Then the story jumps ahead two years to find Kafuku accepting an arts residence in Hiroshima where he’s involved in mounting a multi-lingual, international version of Anton Chekov’s  Uncle Vanya  (a perfect choice of play, as it’s another story in which nothing yet everything happens). The organizers assign him a driver, Misaki, played by Tôko Miura, and as the two get to know each other (the relationship not going in the way we might expect) we realize that she, too, is in the process of coping and healing, just like all of us. The movie keeps piling on incident and adding characters but never loses track of its thematic focus or its gentle, measured, rhythmic beauty, that of a flower unfolding in time-lapse. ( Matt Zoller Seitz ) 

1. " The Power of the Dog "

There are good films every year. If we're lucky, there are a few great films. But there are few films that actually feel like they make time stop. We stop thinking about the real world (even if that's harder than ever lately). We don't look at our phone or try to predict where the story is going. The world falls away and we sit entirely enraptured by the spell that's being cast by the storyteller in front of us. No one accomplished this like Jane Campion this year.

On paper, "The Power of the Dog" sounds familiar. It's got a setting we've seen hundreds of times before although even that feels distinct here as Campion's vision of 1925 Montana has a lyrical, almost outsider perspective (it was shot in New Zealand). "The Power of the Dog" is the story of a man who has precise control over every aspect of his life from what his ranchers eat for dinner to exactly what is done with the pelts they collect. One could spend hours unpacking the actions of Phil Burbank (a career-best turn from Benedict Cumberbatch ) but they start when he senses a loss of control over his brother George ( Jesse Plemons ). When the kinder Burbank finds love with Rose ( Kirsten Dunst ), Phil lashes out like a parent who realizes his child doesn't need him anymore. And he senses a potential new life to control in Peter ( Kodi Smit-McPhee ), Rose's son.

Still, tales of rivalries between brothers are as old as the Western genre itself, but Campion finds a way to breathe new poetic life into her adaptation of Thomas Savage's vicious novel. It's in her splashes of color against a muted palette; her balance between the lyrical and the brutal in her storytelling; her undeniable direction of performances that never feel false. Jonny Greenwood's score, Ari Wegner's cinematography, Peter Sciberras' editing—"The Power of the Dog" is like a symphony without a single instrument out of tune. ( Brian Tallerico)

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The relevance of film critics is often disputed. Even film reviewing platforms like Rotten Tomatoes feel compelled to be inclusive of all lenses of film appreciation by having two kinds of rating systems, where the Tomatometer shows the aggregate of what approved critics think of a film and the audience score is a representative of the audience’s response to a film. There are also separate award shows dedicated to critics-approved films, cementing the fact that the opinion of a critic is only a part of a film’s history and is not the end of all means for a film's success or failure.

Nevertheless, great film criticism has always proved to remain significant in every serious form of discussion since their work is dedicated to creating an ethnography of great films for all generations which inspires future filmmakers. These 10 great film critics remain most referred to at all times, as they remind the audience of what great cinema is and always will be.

10 Vincent Canby

Vincent Canby was known for his entertaining and conversational style of reviewing a film. His matter-of-fact way of describing mediocre films and an equally eloquent way of appreciating good ones made his work a satisfying read. Canby was the chief film critic for the New York Times from 1969 to the early 1990s, and later became the theater film critic of the same publication. His reviews were popular among various filmmakers, such as Woody Allen .

Canby was particularly an admirer of filmmakers such as Stanley Kubrick, Spike Lee, James Ivory, and Woody Allen. Allen reflected that Canby’s review of his film Take the Money and Run influenced his career. Canby sometimes wrote his reviews from the perspective of a Hollywood producer named Stanley, which he created to satirize the film industry in the 1990s. He was also notably critical of films that were praised highly by his peers, such as Rocky , Night of the Living Dead , One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Deliverance, and The Godfather II .

9 Stanley Kauffmann

Stanley Kauffmann started his film criticism journey with the New Republic in 1958 which lead to a 55-year-old career in film criticism ending in 2013. He also contributed as the drama critic for the New York Times in 1966. Kauffmann was an advocate of foreign cinema, and he popularized the works of Ingmar Bergman , Francois Truffaut, Claude Chabrol and Yashuziro Ozu in America. His work inspired future film critics such as Roger Ebert and David Denby.

His diverse experience reflected in his philosophical perspectives in his work. Kaufmann also had unpopular opinions about films that were highly praised for example Star Wars , Raiders of the Lost Ark , The Godfather , Pulp Fiction, Million Dollar Baby , Gone with the Wind , and 2001 A Space Odyssey. Kauffmann worked as an actor, a stage manager, a book editor and wrote philosophic novels before being a film critic. His background as an actor and a writer made him stand apart in his criticism, as his reviews also included nuggets of film tutorials and could be read as a work of literary significance.

8 Leonard Maltin

Leonard Maltin started his film journalism career at the early age of 15 writing for publications such as Classic Images and his own fanzine Film Fan Monthly . He pursued his degree in journalism from New York University and then published articles in numerous journals newspapers and magazines including Variety and Downbeat . Later, Leonard gained popularity by interviewing on a weekly program called Martin on Movies . For 3 years, he co-hosted the weekly syndicated program Hot Ticket, which was produced by Entertainment Tonight .

Matlin became a film writer for hire and has published his work in popular publications such as the New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The London Times, Smithsonian, TV Guide Esquire, etc. In 1997, he became a voting member of the National Film Registry, which selects 25 landmark American films every year. He has become a popular Pop Culture figure for his iconic beard and glasses, and has been referred to in South Park . Maltin’s collection of reviews is compiled in his book Movie Guide, which has been influential for several film writers while starting their careers

7 François Roland Truffaut

The French filmmaker François Roland Truffaut was also a prolific film critic. He started his own film club in 1948 and was greatly influenced by the work of fellow critic Andre Bazin. Truffaut joined the French army, which he disliked. Bazin used his political proximity to get Bazin out of the army and gave him a job as a critic in his magazine, Cahiers du Cinéma which became a powerful voice of the French New Wave movement. Truffaut was popular for his unpopular opinions and snarky reviews, and was nicknamed The Gravedigger of French Cinema . He along with Bazin contributed to formulating the Auteur Theory, which refers to the distinct signature of a filmmaker while making a film. The theory was criticized in the beginning, but is today one of the most widely discussed theories in film criticism.

Related: Film History: The French New Wave Explained

6 Andrew Sarris

Andrew Sarris grew in popularity for his writing in The Village Views, particularly for lauding the works of Alfred Hitchcock . He later went to Paris and was influenced by the work of the French New Wave after watching Truffaut’s Shoot the Piano Player and Godard’s A Woman is a Woman. Later, Sarris was responsible for popularizing the Auteur Theory, a popular theory coined by French critics and filmmakers, in America. He wrote for The New York Observer till 2009 and later co-founded the National Society of Film Critics. A collection of essays by critics, filmmakers, and fans were compiled in Citizen Sarris, American Film Critic: Essays in Honor of Andrew Sarris which was edited by Emanuak Levy. Filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese and Peter Bogdanovich contributed to the essay. Sarris’s work has been considered influential to several critics such as Kenneth Turan, K. Hoberman, and Michael Philips.

5 Kenneth Turan

Kenneth Turan is one of the most widely-read film critics who wrote for the Los Angeles Times from 1991 to 2020. Turan was known for his unapologetic stone-cold reviews and also his eclectic range of knowledge of world cinema and documentaries. Turan has also written for The Washington Pos t and The Progressive. He famously wrote a negative review of James Cameron’s Titanic, for which Cameron demanded him being fired from his post. The debacle was featured in For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism. In his book, Not to Be Missed: Fifty-Four Favorites From a Lifetime of Film, Turan compiles films that he loved growing up and thinks will resonate with the audience. The book blends history and film culture as he recommends films from all genres and ages.

4 Pauline Kael

Pauline Kael was known for her contributions to The New Yorker from 1968 to 1991 and was highly regarded for her witty and contrarian opinions. Kael was unique and disruptive in her approach to film commentary and invented a new form of film criticism that was vivid and experimental. Kael was often criticized for disapproving popular films, which eventually led her to lose her position at McCall’s, a leading woman’s magazine. She wrote a review panning the film The Sound of Music titled The Sound of Money, which raised several eyebrows with the editors of McCall’s.

She was later fired for her relentless spree of giving negative reviews to popular films such as Lawrence of Arabia , Dr. Zhivago, and A Hard Day’s Night. Her reputation as a contrarian led to several editors altering her work without her permission at The New Republic. Her writing style was considered to be too brash for a sophisticated banner like The New Yorker . Nevertheless, Kael later received the George Polk Award for her work as a critic for the latter.

3 Mark Kermode

Mark Kermode is known for his work as a regular on BBC Radio 5 Live Kermode and Mayo's Film Review, which he hosts with radio host Simon Mayo. Kermode was born in July 1963 in Barnet, England, and began his career as a film critic in the 1980s with various publications featuring his work such as The Guardian, Sight and Sound, and being a regular contributor to The Observer . Kermode is known for his eloquent and insightful criticism, which is not jargon-heavy and can be accessed by the everyday film viewer. He has written several books such as The Good, the Bad and the Multiplex and Hatchet Job: Love Movies, Hate Critics which investigate the role and relevance of film criticism in the contemporary film culture.

2 Gene Siskel

Eugene Kal Siskel, better known as Gene Siskel , is known for his collaboration with fellow popular film critic Roger Ebert. He hosted several series of movie review programs on television from 1975 till his death in 1999 with Ebert. Siskel started his film writing career with the Chicago Tribune in 1969 and in 1975 he worked at the Opening Soon at the Theatre Near You show with Roger Ebert. The duo stuck together ever since. Siskel’s television career outperformed his print career due to the popularity of his television shows with Ebert. They were known for their professional rivalry, critical argument, and their thumbs up and thumbs down rating system, which became a part of American pop culture. Ironically, Siskel was a true individualist and believed film criticism was a solo pursuit, even though his career skyrocketed following his professional camaraderie with Ebert.

Related: A Look at What Siskel & Ebert Called the Worst Movie Ever Made

1 Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert is considered to be the most influential film critic who has shaped film criticism in the 21st century. Ebert started his career as a film critic in the Chicago Sun Times in 1967 and contributed to the publication till his death in 2013. Ebert was the first film critic to win the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism and the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2005. Ebert stood out from the rest because his critical perspectives complimented with his humanistic and witty views, turning films into an everyday sentiment rather than an unattainable artistic endeavor that only thought elites could pursue.

He was known to be more lenient than most critics but wrote several reviews panning films he despised which were enjoyed by many. He even wrote keeping in mind audiences that were not particularly film fanatics, simplifying films to a larger audience. Furthermore, he was also responsible for popularizing international films to an American audience. His collaboration with Gene Siskel was a highlight of his career, and the duo’s heated arguments made film criticism popular in American pop culture. Ebert was diagnosed with papillary thyroid cancer in 2002 and died in 2013 at the age of 70.

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The Best Movie Reviews We’ve Ever Written — IndieWire Critics Survey

David ehrlich.

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Every week, IndieWire asks a select handful of film critics two questions and publishes the results on Monday. (The answer to the second, “What is the best film in theaters right now?”, can be found at the end of this post.)

While this survey typically asks smart critics to direct readers toward good movies, we hope that the reverse is also true, and that these posts help movies (good or bad) direct readers towards smart critics. 

In that spirit, we asked our panel of critics to reflect on their favorite piece of film criticism that they’ve ever written (and we encouraged them to put aside any sort of modesty when doing so).

Their responses provide rich and far-reaching insight into contemporary film criticism, and what those who practice it are hoping to achieve with their work.

Siddhant Adlakha (@SidizenKane), Freelance for The Village Voice and /Film

Let’s cut right to the chase. Christopher Nolan is probably my favourite working director, and going five thousand words deep on his career after “Dunkirk” was an itch I’d been waiting to scratch for nearly a decade. “The Dark Knight” was my dorm-room poster movie — I’m part of the generation that explored films through the IMDb Top 250 growing up — though as my cinematic horizons expanded and my understanding of storytelling grew, I didn’t leave Nolan’s work behind as I did the likes of “Scarface” and “The Boondock Saints.” What’s more, each new film by Nolan hits me like a tonne of bricks. I’m waiting, almost eagerly, for him to disappoint me. It hasn’t happened yet, and I needed to finally sit down and figure out why.

In “Convergence At ‘Dunkirk,’” by far the longest piece I’ve ever written, I’d like to think I unpacked a decade worth of my awe and admiration, for a filmmaker who uses the studio canvas to explore human beings through our relationship to time. Tarkovsky referred to cinema as “sculpting in time.” Time disorients. Time connects us. Time travels, at different speeds, depending on one’s relationship to it, whether in dreams or in war or in outer space, and time can be captured, explored and dissected on screen.

What’s more, Nolan’s films manipulate truth as much as time, as another force relative to human perception, determining our trajectories and interpersonal dynamics in fundamental ways. All this is something I think I knew, instinctively, as a teenage viewer, but putting words to these explorations, each from a different time yet connected intrinsically, is the written criticism that I most stand by. It felt like something that I was meant to write, as I interrogated my own evolving emotional responses to art as time went on.

Carlos Aguilar (@Carlos_Film), Freelance for Remezcla

At the 2017 Sundance premiere of Miguel Arteta’s “Beatriz at Dinner,” starring Salma Hayek, I found myself in shock at the reactions I heard from the mostly-white audience at the Eccles Theatre. I was watching a different movie, one that spoke to me as an immigrant, a Latino, and someone who’s felt out of place in spaces dominated by people who’ve never been asked, “Where are you really from?” That night I went back to the condo and wrote a mountain of thoughts and personal anecdotes that mirrored what I saw on screen.

This was a much different piece from what I had usually written up to that point: coverage on the Best Foreign Language Oscar race, pieces on animation, interviews with internationally acclaimed directors, and reviews out of festivals. Those are my intellectual passions, this; however, was an examination on the identity that I had to built as an outsider to navigate a society were people like me rarely get the jobs I want.

My editor at Remezcla, Vanessa Erazo, was aware of the piece from the onset and was immediately supportive, but it would take months for me to mull it over and rework it through multiple drafts until it was ready for publication in time for the film’s theatrical release. In the text, I compared my own encounters with casual racism and ignorance with those Hayek’s character faces throughout the fateful gathering at the center of the film. The reception surpassed all my expectations. The article was shared thousands of times, it was praised, it was criticized, and it truly confronted me with the power that my writing could have.

A few months later in September, when Trump rescinded DACA, I wrote a social media post on my experience as an undocumented person working in the film industry, and how difficult it is to share that struggle in a world were most people don’t understand what it means to live a life in the shadows. The post was picked up by The Wrap and republished in the form of an op-ed, which I hope put a new face on the issue for those who didn’t directly knew anyone affected by it before. Once again that piece on “Beatriz at Dinner” regained meaning as I found myself filled with uncertainty.

Ken Bakely (@kbake_99), Freelance for Film Pulse

Like many writers, I tend to subconsciously disown anything I’ve written more than a few months ago, so I read this question, in practice, as what’s my favorite thing I’ve written recently. On that front, I’d say that the review of “Phantom Thread” that I wrote over at my blog comes the closest to what I most desire to do as a critic. I try to think about a movie from every front: how the experience is the result of each aspect, in unique quantities and qualities, working together. It’s not just that the acting is compelling or the score is enveloping, it’s that each aspect is so tightly wound that it’s almost indistinguishable from within itself. A movie is not an algebra problem. You can’t just plug in a single value and have everything fall into place.

“Phantom Thread” is Paul Thomas Anderson’s dreamy cinematography. It is Jonny Greenwood’s impeccably seductive, baroque music. It is Vicky Krieps’s ability to perfectly shatter our preconceptions at every single turn as we realize that Alma is the movie’s actual main character. We often talk about how good films would be worse-off if some part of it were in any way different. In the case of “Phantom Thread,” you flat-out can’t imagine how it would even exist if these things were changed. When so many hot take thinkpieces try to explain away every ending or take a hammer to delicate illusions, it was a pleasure to try and understand how a movie like this one operates on all fronts to maintain an ongoing sense of mystique.

Christian Blauvelt (@Ctblauvelt), BBC Culture

I don’t know if it’s my best work, but a landmark in my life as a critic was surely a review of Chaplin’s “The Circus,” in time for the release of its restoration in 2010. I cherish this piece , written for Slant Magazine, for a number of reasons. For one, I felt deeply honored to shed more light on probably the least known and least respected of Chaplin’s major features, because it’s a film that demonstrates such technical virtuosity it dispels once and for all any notion that his work is uncinematic. (Yes, but what about the rest of his filmography you ask? My response is that any quibbles about the immobility of Chaplin’s camera suggest an ardent belief that the best directing equals the most directing.) For another, I was happy this review appeared in Slant Magazine, a publication that helped me cut my critical teeth and has done the same for a number of other critics who’ve gone on to write or edit elsewhere. That Slant is now struggling to endure in this financially ferocious landscape for criticism is a shame – the reviews I wrote for them around 2009-10 helped me refine my voice even that much more than my concurrent experience at Entertainment Weekly, where I had my day job. And finally, this particular review will always mean a lot to me because it’s the first one I wrote that I saw posted in its entirety on the bulletin board at Film Forum. For me, there was no surer sign that “I’d made it”.

Richard Brody (@tnyfrontrow), The New Yorker

No way would I dare to recommend any pieces of my own, but I don’t mind mentioning a part of my work that I do with special enthusiasm. Criticism, I think, is more than the three A’s (advocacy, analysis, assessment); it’s prophetic, seeing the future of the art from the movies that are on hand. Yet many of the most forward-looking, possibility-expanding new films are in danger of passing unnoticed (or even being largely dismissed) due to their departure from familiar modes or norms, and it’s one of my gravest (though also most joyful) responsibilities to pay attention to movies that may be generally overlooked despite (or because of) their exceptional qualities. (For that matter, I live in fear of missing a movie that needs such attention.)

But another aspect of that same enthusiasm is the discovery of the unrealized future of the past—of great movies made and seen (or hardly seen) in recent decades that weren’t properly discussed and justly acclaimed in their time.”. Since one of the critical weapons used against the best of the new is an ossified and nostalgic classicism, the reëvaluation of what’s canonical, the acknowledgment of unheralded masterworks—and of filmmakers whose careers have been cavalierly truncated by industry indifference—is indispensable to and inseparable from the thrilling recognition of the authentically new.

Deany Hendrick Cheng (@DeandrickLamar), Freelance for Barber’s Chair Digital

It’s a piece on two of my favorite films of 2017, “Lady Bird” and “Call Me By Your Name”, and about how their very different modes of storytelling speak to the different sorts of stories we tell ourselves. Objectively, I don’t know if this is my best work in terms of pure style and craft, but I do think it’s the most emblematic in terms of what I value in cinema. I think every film is, in some way, a treatise on how certain memories are remembered, and I think cinema matters partly because the best examples of it are prisms through which the human experience is refracted.

Above everything else, every movie has to begin with a good story, and the greatest stories are the ones that mirror not just life, but the ways in which life is distorted and restructured through the process of remembering. Every aspect of a film, from its screenplay on down, must add something to the film’s portrayal of remembering, and “Lady Bird” and “Call Me By Your Name” accomplish this organic unity of theme with such charm yet in such distinct ways, that they were the perfect counterpoints to each other, as well as the perfect stand-ins for cinema as a whole, for me.

Liam Conlon (@Flowtaro), Ms En Scene

My favorite piece of my own work is definitely  “The Shape of Water’s” Strickland as the “Ur-American.”  I’m proud of it because it required me to really take stock of all the things that Americans are taught from birth to take as given. That meant looking at our history of colonialism, imperialism, racism, anticommunism and really diving into how all Americans, whether they’re liberal or conservative, can internalize these things unless they take the time to self-examine. Just as “Pan’s Labyrinth’s” despotic Captain Vidal was a masterful representation of Francisco Franco’s fascism, Richard Strickland represents a distinctly American kind of fascism. Writers Guillermo del Toro and Vanessa Taylor took great care in Strickland’s creation, and my piece was my own way of self-examining to make sure I never become or abide by a person like Strickland ever again.

Robert Daniels (@812filmreviews), Freelance

This is tricky, but “Annihilation” is definitely my favorite piece of film criticism that I’ve written. My writing style is a combination of criticism and gifs, and sometimes the words are better than the gifs, and the gifs are better than the words. With “Annihilation,” I thought the balance was perfect . My favorite portion: “Lena is just an idea, part of an equation that’s been erased from a chalkboard and rewritten with a different solution. The shimmer is part of her, even down to the DNA” is up there as one of my best. It was also a struggle to write because that film had more wild theories than the Aliens in Roswell. Also, the amount of research I had to do, combining Plato’s Ideal Forms, Darwin, the Bible, and Nietzsche, was absurd. However, it did make it easier to find matching gifs. The result made for my most studious, yet lighthearted read.

Alonso Duralde (@ADuralde), The Wrap

I’m the worst judge of my own material; there’s almost nothing I’ve ever written that I don’t want to pick at and re-edit, no matter how much time has passed. But since, for me, the hardest part of film criticism is adequately praising a movie you truly love, then by default my best review would probably be of one of my favorite films of all time, Charlie Kaufman’s “Synecdoche, New York.”

David Ehrlich (@davidehrlich), IndieWire

I can’t summon the strength to re-read it, but I remember thinking that my piece on grief and “Personal Shopper” was emblematic of how I hope to thread individual perspective into arts criticism.

Shelley Farmer (@ShelleyBFarmer), Freelance for RogerEbert.com and Publicist at Film Forum

My favorite piece is a very recent one: For this year’s Women Writers Week on Roger Ebert, I wrote about “Phantom Thread”, “Jane Eyre,” and twisted power dynamics in hetero romance . I loved that it allowed me to dig deep into my personal fixations (19th century literature, gender, romance as power struggle), but – more importantly – it was exciting to be part of a series that highlighted the breadth of criticism by women writers.

Chris Feil (@chrisvfeil), Freelance for The Film Experience, This Had Oscar Buzz Podcast

My answer to this would be kind of a cheat, as my favorite work that I do is my weekly column about movie music called Soundtracking that I write over at The Film Experience. Soundtracks and needle drops have been a personal fascination, so the opportunity to explore the deeper meaning and context of a film’s song choices have been a real labor of love. Because of the demands and time constraints of what we do, it can be easy to spend our all of our energy on assignments and chasing freelance opportunities rather than devoting time to a pet project – but I’ve found indulging my own uncommon fascination to be invaluable in developing my point of view. And serve as a constant check-in with my passion. Pushed for a single entry that I would choose as the best, I would choose the piece I wrote on “Young Adult”‘s use of “The Concept” by Teenage Fanclub for how it posits a single song as the key to unlocking both character and narrative.

Candice Frederick (@ReelTalker), Freelance for Shondaland, Harper’s Bazaar

“ Mother ” written for Vice. It’s one of my favorites because it conveys how visceral my experience was watching the movie. It’s truly stifling, uncomfortable, and frantic–and that’s what my review explains in detail. I wanted to have a conversation with the reader about specific aspects of the film that support the thesis, so I did.

Luiz Gustavo (@luizgvt), Cronico de Cinema

Well, I recently wrote a piece for Gazeta do Povo, a major outlet at Paraná state in Brazil, about Guillermo del Toro’s “The Shape of Water” (it is not on their site, but they were kind enough to let me replicate on my own website ). I don’t know the extent of the powers of Google Translator from Portugese to english, so you have to rely on my own account: is a text in which I was able to articulate de cinematographic references in the work of Mr. Del Toro, as well his thematic obsessions, the genre bending and social critique. All of this topics were analyzed in a fluid prose. On top of that, it was really fun to write!

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Can't decide what to watch? Here are the best movie review YouTube channels. From new movies playing in theaters to classic films, these popular YouTube movie reviewers praise the best films and trash the worst movies of all time . What are the best movie review channels on YouTube? 

When ranking the best movie review YouTubers, AngryJoeShow, Jeremy Jahns, and Chris Stuckmann are definitely in the top ten. If you're looking for funny movie reviews , trailer reactions, and film recommendations, check out theres other good YouTube film critics, like CinemaSins , RedLetterMedia, YourMovieSucksDOTorg, kermodeandmayo, and Beyond The Trailer.  

Vote up the best movie reviewers on YouTube, and add your favorite film review YouTube channels missing from this list. 

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‘The Deliverance’ Review: Lee Daniels Directs a Demonic-Possession Movie in Which the Real Demons Are Personal (and Flamboyant)

Andra Day plays a tormented and abusive single mother fighting the devil in herself. Then the real one shows up.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

• Will the People Who Say They Love Cinema the Most Come Back to the Movies? 2 days ago
• ‘The Deliverance’ Review: Lee Daniels Directs a Demonic-Possession Movie in Which the Real Demons Are Personal (and Flamboyant) 3 days ago
• ‘Alien: Romulus’ Review: The Primal Shock and Awe Is Gone, but It’s a Good Video-Game Horror Ride 5 days ago

As a filmmaker, Lee Daniels tends to get slagged off on for being flamboyantly garish and over-the-top. Some of that is deserved, but the truth is that when he’s cooking on all cylinders Daniels is a gifted filmmaker. “ The Deliverance ” is the sixth feature he has directed, and I’ve been a fan of three of them: “Precious” (2009), his extraordinary tale of a stunted inner-city teenager’s escape from her domestic hell; “The Paperboy” (2012), a bold and unnerving Southern gothic noir; and “The United States vs. Billie Holiday” (2021), a musical-political biopic that, while flawed, did a superb job of channeling its subject’s complicated ferocity.

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Ebony, whose temper has gotten her jail time, struggles with alcohol but seems, these days, more sober than not. Yet even when she isn’t drinking, we see her smack Dre in the mouth at the dinner table because he spoke up about wanting milk, accusing her of being too cheap to buy it (she says that he’s lactose intolerant but she’s never been to a doctor about it). Is Ebony the film’s equivalent of Mary, the monster mother played by Mo’Nique in “Precious”? Far from it, yet there’s an overlap. She’s a mother who’s been coarsened, at times, into meanness. She’s also quite protective, unleashing her hellion wrath on a teen bully down the block.

What Daniels wants us to see is that Ebony is a conduit for forces of oppression — economic and racial — that have dogged her life and turned it into a daily pressure cooker. The movie makes no excuses for her, but it does show us that her demons overlap with society’s. And Day, with a face of expressive misery and the energy of an imploding firecracker, portrays her as a shrewd fusion of harridan and victim. Mo’Nique is actually on hand here — she plays the DCS officer who oversees Ebony like a prim detective, looking for any sign that she’s messing up and should therefore have her kids taken away.

For all of Day’s searing anger, the showboat performance in “The Deliverance” is the one given by Glenn Close as Berta, Ebony’s white mother, who has come to live with them. Berta is a reformed junkie who found Jesus and is now going through chemo, which has left her head with nothing but scraggly wisps on top. But she wears wigs of showy blonde curls and goes out in revealing tops, flirting like mad. Berta is at war with her daughter, but she also, you know, cares . And it’s fun to see Glenn Close cut loose, in what is actually a rather well-thought-out performance, even if the character makes her Mamaw in “Hillbilly Elegy” look understated.

The kids start doing weird things. Dre bangs on the basement door and then stands there like a zombie. At school, all three engage in a bizarre acting out that involves bodily fluids. Is this a projection of their suffering from domestic abuse? Or are they being taken over by spirits? Yes and yes, and that’s supposed to be the film’s intrigue. But once the devil actually takes over, and an exorcist (excuse me, I meant an apostle , played by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor from “Origin”) shows up, all in order to perform an exorcism (excuse me, I meant a deliverance , which turns out to be the exact same thing), Daniels reaches into the bag of levitating, skin-mottling, cracking-spider-limb tricks that have been propelling this genre for decades. The twist is that Ebony ends up squaring off against herself, literally facing down her own demons. But it turns out those demons were only halfway interesting when they were real.

Reviewed online, Aug. 15, 2024. MPA Rating: R. Running time: 112 MIN.

• Production: A Netflix release of a Tucker Tooley Entertainment, Lee Daniels Entertainment, Turn Left production. Producers: Lee Daniels, Tucker Tooley, Pamela Oas Williams, Jackson Nguyen, Todd Crites. Executive producers: Jackie Shenoo, Hilary Shor, Greg Renker, Gregoire Gensollen.
• Crew: Director: Lee Daniels. Screenplay: David Coggeshall, Elijah Bynum. Camera: Eli Arenson. Editor: Stan Salfas. Music: Lucas Vidal.
• With: Andra Day, Glenn Close, Mo’Nique, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Anthony B. Jenkins, Miss Lawrence, Demi Singleton, Tasha Smith, Omar Epps, Caleb McLaughlin.

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‘Jackpot!’ Review: Dystopia, Hollywood Style

Awkwafina and John Cena star in a fitfully funny near-future comedy with strangely mixed metaphors.

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By Alissa Wilkinson

In the near future, things are not very different. People wear the same clothes as we do, ride the bus to work, call each other on cellphones and stay in terrible Airbnbs run by hosts from hell. In the near future, everything is still expensive. And if you want to be an actor, you move to Los Angeles.

Yet a few things have changed. Following the Great Depression of 2026, the government of California — as desperate for money as its people are — instituted a Grand Lottery in which one citizen of Los Angeles wins some huge sum. Sounds great, but unfortunately whoever wrote the law seems to be a fan of “The Purge.” Until sundown on Lottery Day, anyone who successfully kills the lottery winner (all weapons allowed except guns) gets the winnings. After sundown, murder becomes illegal again, until next year.

Somehow the Michigander Katie (Awkwafina) missed this news, and thus had the bad fortune to arrive in Los Angeles to pursue her dream of acting the night before Lottery Day 2030. She, of course, accidentally wins the $3.6 billion jackpot while at an audition. Suddenly, everyone is after her, and the only person she can maybe trust is a “freelance protector” named Noel (John Cena, who may be Hollywood’s most dependably funny actor). He’ll get her safely to sundown. Probably.

This is quite the dystopian view of the future, though other movies have proposed that within a few decades, we’ll resort to state-sanctioned violence to secure our daily bread. In the world of Boots Riley’s comedy “ Sorry to Bother You ,” for instance, game show contestants beat themselves to a pulp to collect money and pay off their debts. Or, of course, there’s “ Squid Game .”

More dystopian, though, is the sense that in this version of the near future, nobody is capable of relating to anyone except through money. Only hours into her new L.A. life, Katie tells off a man (Adam Ray) who’s complaining loudly about his young daughter’s failure to get acting jobs that will line his pockets — as his daughter sits right next to him. Moments later, Katie meets a kind older woman (Becky Ann Baker) who wishes her luck, and then, quietly, swipes Katie’s watch.

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Bad Monkey gives us Vince Vaughn at his best

The actor stars as former Florida detective Andrew Yancy in the Apple TV+ adaptation of Carl Hiaasen's novel.

Kristen Baldwin is the TV critic for EW

For years, Hollywood hasn’t really known what to do with Vince Vaughn . A tree-tall Midwesterner with an everyman face and a rapid-fire delivery, Vaughn was the king of R-rated comedies through the first half of the 2000s. But eventually, the risk-averse movie industry ditched ideas for IP (“The people in charge don’t want to get fired,” the actor noted recently ), leaving the Old School star fewer outlets for his specific comedic style.

Apple TV+

After two very different forays into television — winging it with Larry David as Freddy Funkhauser in Curb Your Enthusiasm ; glowering his way through the dreary second season of True Detective — Vince Vaughn returns to TV with Bad Monkey (streaming now on Apple TV+), an adaptation of Carl Hiaasen’s 2013 novel. The 10-episode crime dramedy, developed by Bill Lawrence ( Ted Lasso ), gives Vaughn a showcase to do what he does best — though with a gentler, more mature polish.

“My problem is that I try to do the right thing, but in the wrong way,” explains Andrew Yancy (Vaughn), a former police detective living in southern Florida. That propensity for misguided behavior is why Yancy was punitively transferred from the Miami PD to the Keys some years back. It’s also why he felt the need to defend his girlfriend, Bonnie ( Michelle Monaghan ) from her brutish husband (Jeffrey S. Herman) — an act that resulted in his current suspension from the Key West PD. (To pay the bills, he now works as a restaurant inspector.) And it’s why Yancy can’t help himself from meddling when his former partner, Rogelio (John Ortiz), asks him to do a simple favor: Deliver a severed arm pulled from the local waters to the coroner’s office in Miami.

The appendage drags Yancy into a mystery involving a seemingly unconnected group of characters: Christopher ( Rob Delaney ), a greedy real estate developer; Neville (Ronald Pete), a Bahamian fisherman on the verge of eviction thanks to Christopher’s latest project; Eve (Meredith Hagner), a suspiciously carefree widow whose husband is identified as the owner of the severed arm; and Rosa (Natalie Martinez), a Miami medical examiner who escapes the grim grind of her job by helping Yancy investigate the origins of the lonely limb.

Said mystery takes its time unfolding over 10 episodes — but it’s fine, because Bad Monkey is really a vehicle for sand-and-surf vibes, propelled by an extensive and appealing ensemble cast. Jodie Turner-Smith glides fluidly between enigmatic menace and youthful yearning as Gracie — an Obeah woman known to locals as the Dragon Queen — who Neville hires to curse Christopher. Ortiz delivers an amusing, deadpan frustration as Yancy’s straight-man foil, and Alex Moffat ( SNL ) is pitch-perfect smarmy as Evan Shook, a realtor desperately trying to sell a hideous McMansion next to Yancy’s house. Zach Braff is atypically understated as Izzy O’Peele, a pill-popping former surgeon mixed up in the whole mess.

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Unlike so many of the fast-talking, joke-spewing, razor-tongued guys Vaughn has played in the past, Andrew Yancy has a genuine, caring heart from the jump, not one that needs to be revealed over a necessary character arc. Yancy needles Rogelio over everything — his driving, how he eats ice cream — but he’s most concerned about his buddy’s inability to “experience joy.” In the past, Vaughn might have been tempted to douse all Yancy’s dialogue with the sour aftertaste of superiority, but here his one-liners feel more like a peck on the cheek than a slap in the face. He and Martinez have a playful chemistry that almost overshadows their 14-year age gap, which the writers dutifully acknowledge. (“I haven’t had much luck with guys my age,” Rosa tells her sister Mel, played by Gizel Jimenez.)

The story is recounted in voiceover by Captain Fitzpatrick (Tom Nowicki), a local fishing guide, whose folksy asides fit the mood — though they did, at times, test the limits of my tolerance for narration. Monaghan brings a languid sexiness to Bonnie, but her storyline feels isolated from the rest of the narrative. I would have loved more with her and Ashley Nicole Black’s Johnna Russell, the Oklahoma federal agent who tracks her down; perhaps that's a wish for season 2.

Bad Monkey hasn’t been renewed yet, but the finale sets up another mystery… and Hiaasen did write a second book starring his loquacious (former) detective Andrew Yancy. If Vaughn's game, so am I. It's been fun rediscovering why we all liked him so much in the first place. Grade: B+

The first two episodes of Bad Monkey are streaming now on Apple TV+.

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'Alien: Romulus' is another franchise movie that brings more nostalgia than novelty

Justin Chang

Alien: Romulus is the latest movie in the long-running Alien sci-fi/horror series. But it actually takes place shortly after the events of the very first film: Ridley Scott’s 1979 classic, Alien . 20th Century Studios hide caption

If you’ve gone to the movies lately, you might have noticed — or even purchased — one of those novelty popcorn buckets promoting the year’s big blockbusters. Maybe you dug into the gaping maw of a Dune: Part Two sand worm — or, more recently, into the hollowed-out head of Deadpool or Wolverine.

Now, there are at least two popcorn-bucket models promoting the new movie Alien: Romulus . One is shaped like the head of a Xenomorph, that most terrifying of horror-movie demons, though I suspect without the drooling retractable tongue. Another bucket comes affixed with a Facehugger, a skittering critter that’s famously fond of attaching itself to a human’s head and laying an egg in their throat.

13.7: Cosmos And Culture

Why 'prometheus' went flat.

'Alien: Covenant' Continues To Mine Old Ground

These concession-stand gimmicks may be new, but the iconography of Alien: Romulus could hardly be more familiar. That’s no surprise; these monsters, brilliantly conceived decades ago by the Swiss artist H.R. Giger, have kept this series alive. In recent years Ridley Scott, the director of the unimprovable 1979 Alien , has tried to push the franchise in a more philosophical direction, in movies like Prometheus and Alien: Covenant . By contrast, Alien: Romulus , which was directed and co-written by the Uruguayan filmmaker Fede Alvarez, has no such weighty ambitions. It’s an efficient and reasonably entertaining thriller that, like a lot of franchise movies nowadays, traffics more in nostalgia than novelty.

Álvarez does set his sights somewhat high; he means to take us back to the franchise’s glory days. The story, set in the year 2142, is sandwiched between the events of the first Alien and James Cameron’s hugely entertaining 1986 sequel, Aliens . As in those films, starring the incomparable Sigourney Weaver, there’s a tough-minded female protagonist. Her name is Rain, and she’s played by Cailee Spaeny, the versatile young actor from Priscilla and Civil War . There’s also a friendly, not entirely reliable android sidekick — Andy, played by the English actor David Jonsson. We’re in a period that you might call late late capitalism, where villainous corporations rule the day and Rain, like most people her age, is part of a heavily exploited labor class, working off debts that will never be repaid.

Cailee Spaeny as Rain Carradine in Alien: Romulus. 20th Century Studios hide caption

And so when she and Andy hear of a possible way out, they seize the opportunity along with a few friends — never mind that it means heading up into space and boarding a large rustbucket ship that’s not quite so abandoned as it appears. The ship has two sections, named Remus and Romulus, which partly explains the Roman mythology-referencing title. As for what lurks aboard the ship, Álvarez knows there’s no point in building mystery or suspense, and he unleashes his army of Facehuggers and Xenomorphs almost immediately. His human characters, however, do intend to put up a fight.

Álvarez has a knack for rebooting horror properties, having made his debut with a fresh 2013 spin on Evil Dead . He followed that with the walking-on-eggshells thriller Don’t Breathe , about a group of young burglars trying to rob a blind homeowner. There are actually some amusing plot similarities between that movie and Alien: Romulus , right down to a third-act twist that pushes things into see-it-to-believe-it body-horror territory.

Álvarez is a strong director of action, and he riffs inventively on classic Alien beats. The Xenomorphs, as usual, have corrosive acid for blood — a detail that the movie exploits ingeniously in a suspenseful, gravity-defying set-piece. And there’s at least one memorable moment that reminds us that the Xenomorphs, with their phallic heads and goopy secretions, are among the most psychosexual of cinematic nightmares.

In the end, though, Álvarez’s command of craft only gets him so far. The problem isn’t just that the characters, apart from Rain and Andy, are pretty bland monster fodder. It’s that while the director seems content to update the Alien movies — with young, fresh faces and state-of-the-art technology — he has no apparent idea how to push them forward. His boldest and least successful gambit is to resurrect a key figure from an earlier film — a visual-effects coup that tries to honor the series’ roots, but feels more like a desecration. I’ll never pass up an Alien movie, but I do hope the next one has something more than elaborate fan service in mind. Dwelling too obsessively on the past is no way to guarantee a franchise’s future.

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The ‘borderlands’ movie heads to home streaming in 11 days.

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Borderlands

While it is certainly par for the course for many Hollywood movies to rush themselves to home release on streaming services within a month or two, Borderlands is doing close to an all-time speed run.

The massive box office miss will be headed to digital platforms on August 30 , 11 days from now and just three weeks after it released in theaters on August 9.

This doesn’t mean it will be streaming on a specific service for free, but rather be available for digital purchase and rental on August 30 in places like Amazon Prime Video or Apple TV. It will make its way to being on an actual service later, but not yet. Lionsgate movies stream a lot of places so I’m not sure where that would be.

Borderlands remains one of the worst-reviewed major movies of the year with a 10% critic score, which also puts it around the bottom ten of all video game movie adaptations in history. This was not offset by a mass surge of fan support from gamers, and in two weekends now, the film has only made $18 million worldwide on a budgets north of $120 million and marketing costs on top of that. As it stands, it’s probably going to lose $100 million or more.

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The digital release is meant to erase a barrier to paying for the movie: actually going to the theater, but when these new movies come out it’s often still $20 to rent them initially. Later it may go down to $6-7, but when most people say they’ll “wait until it hits streaming” they mean “wait until it hits streaming and I don’t have to pay for it.”

We’ve heard little from Gearbox about the film since release, but it’s pretty clear it has killed ambitions for expansions of a live action franchise. Borderlands 4 remains an unannounced, huge project in the works for Gearbox and 2K, but given how involved leadership of Gearbox was in this movie, that does raise some questions about what they may think will be good in a fourth game at this point.

There’s no spinning how this went. It’s a massive miss and box office shipwreck in an age when we are in fact getting quite a number of great video game adaptations across film, TV and animation. Borderlands tried to tone itself down to appeal to general audiences who didn’t care while rewriting its lore enough where game fans didn’t like it either. And this is the result. See for yourself on August 30 if you skipped it in the theater, like most did.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy .

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